On Sunday the man and his neighbour woke up to find graffiti tags spray painted in black across their dwellings.

“It was only two weeks prior I spent hours and hours scrubbing the very same wall trying to remove spray paint from a different tag,” the resident said.

And although he has continuously reported the happenings to police, he said he would consider taking matters into his own hands if he caught the perpetrators. 

The resident said, on average, his dwelling falls victim to graffiti every three to six months, sometimes more.

“The time it takes to remove the graffiti makes it so incredibly frustrating when it happens just two weeks later, it’s ridiculous and I don’t understand it.”

The gentleman said with the wall being six to seven feet high, the person or persons tagging the walls would have to be quite tall.

The man said there were also reports of graffiti at Inverell High School this week.

Chief Inspector Rowan O’Brien said penalties for people caught depend on the charges, however malicious damage comes with provisions for a maximum penalty of up to five years imprisonment.

“Also under the Graffiti Control Act of 2008, provisions for the court to impose conditions on the accused person include cleaning up their graffiti and a number of other things,” he said.

Although Inspector O’Brien didn’t believe there was a recent rise in graffiti reported, he said it was like any malicious offence.

“They tend to fluctuate a bit. It’s something we are mindful of leading up to the school holidays. We tend to see more malicious damage to businesses and also schools leading up to and during the break,” he said.

Inspector O’Brien said the best thing about Inverell, as opposed to towns of a similar size, was the minimal graffiti visible around town.

“That’s something police and all residents like to take pride in, that the town is attractive and well maintained without the eyesore of broken shop windows or graffiti,” he said.